


Into Shadows, Part 2

by skyblue_reverie



Series: Into Shadows [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 15:22:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20530226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyblue_reverie/pseuds/skyblue_reverie
Summary: My view of how Into Darkness should have gone.  (Hint: MOAR PIKE AND BONES, and not quite as dark. Hence the title of the fic. See what I did there? :p)This part - the meeting with Admiral Marcus, the day after the "Daystrom" meeting (which, in this 'verse, didn't happen at the Daystrom conference room and Pike's alive)."You want me to carry out a covert mission, without authorization from Starfleet.  Put the Enterprise and her entire crew at risk.  Not to mention the fact that I'll be court-martialed the second I’m back in Federation space."





	Into Shadows, Part 2

**Author's Note:**

> I love love love comments and respond to each one. Since this is a fix-it, some of the dialogue is straight from the movie Into Darkness.
> 
> The series overall is Pike/McCoy and also Bones & Jim as platonic soulmates, but this part is gen.

As Christopher Pike strode into Admiral Marcus’s office, Marcus stood. He spoke to the officers seated around the conference table. “Give us a minute.” 

When the room was empty except for the two of them, Marcus spoke. “Chris. Thank you for coming on such short notice. You were right about Harrison’s plans to attack the emergency session last night. He was observed piloting a stolen gunship outside of the Daystrom room, but when he saw it was empty he got away before he was apprehended. Unfortunately, when that plan failed he did something that, from my point of view anyway, is almost worse. He kidnapped my daughter.”

Chris’s gut clenched. “He’s taken Carol? How? Where? And for god’s sake, why?”

“As for how, he grabbed her when she was leaving her apartment. As for where and why, well. That’s where it gets complicated. Chris, the building that was bombed in London wasn’t a data archive. It was a top-secret branch of Starfleet designated Section 31. They were developing defense technology and training our officers to gather intelligence on the Klingons and any other potential enemy who means to do us harm. Harrison was one of our top agents, and he was working closely with Carol on her weapons project there.”

Chris’s jaw tightened but he didn’t say anything. He knew that Starfleet had an intelligence branch. Didn’t mean he liked it. He liked it even less that Admiral Marcus had let his own daughter, Chris’s goddaughter, become involved with it. But now wasn’t the time or place to discuss it, and Marcus was continuing.

“He went rogue. We don’t know why. Maybe he cracked. But he’s decided that the Federation is his enemy. About an hour ago, I received a pre-recorded time-delayed message from him, holding a phaser to Carol’s head. He said he was taking them to Qo’noS. He used a portable transwarp beaming device he took from Section 31, which left a detectable energy signature when it was activated. I've already dispatched an agent to the location of the warp signature, to retrieve the device. Then we'll know precisely where on Qo'noS they are.”

Pike considered this for a moment. “So he’s taken her to the Klingon homeworld. Is he defecting?”

“I don’t know. But he said in his message that if we went after him, he’d kill her. She’s his insurance policy.”

Chris closed his eyes briefly. Carol was tough, but she had to be scared out of her mind right now. “We’ve got to reconvene senior command, figure out how to respond to this.”

“Chris, you know as well as I do that they’ll write Carol off as a lost cause. The entire senior leadership of Starfleet is so damn afraid of the Klingons that they’re practically pissing themselves to avoid confronting the bastards.”

“Alex, what do you want to do here? If we even get near Klingon space, it’d be all-out war.”

“All-out war with the Klingons is inevitable, Chris. If you ask me, it’s already begun. Since we first learned of their existence, the Klingon Empire has conquered and occupied two planets that we know of and fired on our ships half a dozen times. They are coming our way.”

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

“A rescue mission. Carol has… a chip, implanted when she was a baby. It boosts the ability of transporters to lock onto her, so she can be located and beamed away from much farther than would normally be possible.”

“A chip? Does she know about this?”

Marcus’s eyes were hard. “Does it matter? I’m a father, Chris. You wouldn’t know what that’s like, but I would do anything to keep my little girl safe. Anything.”

Chris didn’t like where this was going, but he responded anyway.

“So you want to stage an unsanctioned rescue mission, right under the Klingons’ noses.”

“The rescue ship would barely even need to enter Klingon space. As part of our defensive strategy, Section 31 developed a new photon torpedo. Long-range and untraceable. It would be invisible to Klingon sensors. You park at the edge of the neutral zone, lock onto Carol’s signal, beam her out, then you take out Harrison with the torpedoes and haul ass.”

“The rescue mission, I understand. But why kill Harrison and risk provoking the Klingons?”

“Chris, Harrison has access to vast amounts of intelligence that could give the Klingons the ability to crush us. To conquer Earth. We cannot allow him to defect and share that knowledge with the Klingons.”

“And I take it that you want me to do all this. You want me to carry out a covert mission, without authorization from Starfleet. Put the Enterprise and her entire crew at risk. Not to mention the fact that I'll be court-martialed the second I’m back in Federation space.”

“The actual mission would be off the books. I’ve got the authority to send you to the edge of the neutral zone on an observation and survey mission. Anything else that happened would just be omitted from your official report. And I’ll make sure it's not in anyone else's report either. The risk to your ship and crew is minimal, since you’ll barely be on the wrong side of the neutral zone. Carol’s your goddaughter. That must mean something to you. And – I’m sorry to have to say this, but you owe me, Chris.”

Chris grimaced. The irony was overwhelming. Kirk had flouted regulations and omitted material facts in an official report in order to save someone, and Chris’d had to trade a favor to Marcus in order to get Kirk off lightly for that violation. Now that favor was being used to demand that he do the exact same thing himself, by the very person who’d been so pissed off when Kirk had been the one to do it.

Still, Carol _was_ his goddaughter. He’d been there for her christening, watched her grow up, been so proud when she’d followed her father’s footsteps into Starfleet Academy. And it did sound like the risk to the Enterprise and her crew was minimal. He’d certainly undertaken more dangerous missions for lower stakes in his career.

“All right, Alex. I’ll do it. You get the orders issued for the ‘observation’ mission, tell me where on Qo'noS they are, and I’ll make sure the Enterprise is ready.”


End file.
